Sam Thielman

New York

Reporter and Critic at Freelance

Freelance Contributor at The New Yorker

Newsmonster. Seen @newyorker, @slate, @voxdotcom, https://t.co/aw24PLK3lx • he/him • have left this snakepit for the duration

Articles

ICE Asks the Food Service Industry To Please Oppress Itself

4 weeks ago | forever-wars.com | Sam Thielman

In the absence of manpower, the agency is trying to assign its own work to the managers of the servers and line cooks it’s trying to abductEdited by Spencer AckermanA SERIES OF RAIDS this week in Washington, D.C. by Immigrations and Customs Enforcement (ICE) was intended to net the agency thousands of new detainees.
ICE Launches All-Out Assault on DC Businesses in Search of TV Moments for Trump

1 month ago | forever-wars.com | Sam Thielman

The richest nation on earth is now a racist reality show for one sad old bigotEdited by Spencer AckermanIMMIGRANT AND CUSTOMS ENFORCEMENT on Tuesday began what FOREVER WARS understands is a two-day series of raids targeting businesses, workers, and schools in Washington, DC, especially chain businesses and delivery drivers.
"Precious Rubbish," by Kayla E.

1 month ago | nytimes.com | Sam Thielman

About halfway through the artist Kayla E.'s shattering memoir, "Precious Rubbish," I realized that, though I was catching most of the biblical references, I needed to return to another foundational text: "Little Lulu," the comic-book series about a mischievous little girl, whose influence on "Precious Rubbish" is visible everywhere from the book's font to the structure of its stories.
"Tongues," by Anders Nilsen

2 months ago | nytimes.com | Sam Thielman

In "Tongues," Anders Nilsen takes the story of Prometheus and sets it in the modern world. When you purchase an independently reviewed book through our site, we earn an affiliate commission. TONGUES: Volume 1, by Anders NilsenI've been getting TONGUES (Pantheon, 368 pp., $35), a retelling of the Greek myth of Prometheus, in the mail for years now.
Exiting Luigi’s Mansion

Dec 12, 2024 | forever-wars.com | Sam Thielman

Edited and with a coda by Spencer AckermanI'M WRITING IRON MAN FOR MARVEL COMICS! IF YOU PUT IT ON YOUR PULL LIST AT A COMIC STORE (AN ONGOING SUBSCRIPTION WHERE THE STORE RESERVES EACH ISSUE FOR YOU), I'LL SEND YOU FREE STUFF! EMAIL SOME KIND OF RECEIPT TO [email protected] AND THE SWAG WILL BE YOURS! ON THE MORNING of December 4, outside an investor conference at the Hilton Hotel on W.
The Best Graphic Novels of 2024

Dec 5, 2024 | nytimes.com | Sam Thielman

The year 2024 was an especially good year for comics readers who had been waiting a long time. Olivier Schrauwen brought his magisterial "Sunday" to a close after five years. After 15, Chris Ware published the third volume in his trilogy of "Datebook" comics adapted from his sketchbooks. And Charles Burns finally completed and published in English the project he'd been serializing in French - "Dédales" to our European friends, "Final Cut" to us.
Sex and Horror and the End of the World, in November's Graphic Novels

Nov 20, 2024 | nytimes.com | Sam Thielman

WORLD WITHIN THE WORLD (Fantagraphics, 320 pp., $39.99) is both a collection of Gfrörer's short works since 2010 and a sort of wide-ranging, loosely arranged survey of Western storytelling from cave paintings to the present day, including the NBC sitcom "Frasier." Her taste in types of trauma and dismay is just as catholic - think of this book as the Norton Anthology of Violence.
Sex and Horror and the End of the World, in November’s Graphic Novels

Nov 20, 2024 | flipboard.com | Sam Thielman

9 hours agoA duct-taped banana sells for $6.2 million at an art auctionNEW YORK — A piece of conceptual art consisting of a simple banana, duct-taped to a wall, sold for $6.2 million at an auction in New York on …NowSan Francisco’s Wave Organ Brings Sounds of the Bay to LifeView the full episode transcript Ever wondered what the San Francisco Bay sounds like beneath the water’s surface?
Confessions of A Poll Worker

Nov 7, 2024 | forever-wars.com | Sam Thielman

Here's what FOREVER WARS’ editor saw as a poll worker in his own pro-Trump part of Brooklyn Edited by Spencer AckermanSPENCER HERE, WITH SOME UP-FRONT ITEMS. This following edition is going to be a Sam joint. I'm currently moving a Zeteo piece of mine through their editorial process.
A Sense of Time Wasted (Productively) Anchors October's Graphic Novels

Oct 31, 2024 | nytimes.com | Sam Thielman

Can you redeem wasted time by making art out of it? That's the question the Belgian cartoonist Olivier Schrauwen asks in SUNDAY (Fantagraphics, 474 pp., $39.99), an enormous, wonderfully funny exploration of the nature of perception and memory. He conducts his research using an unflattering version of his cousin Thibault as his main character, and though Thibault stays inside his little rowhouse for nearly the entire book, "Sunday" is about, well, everything.